The Twitterati

I’ve been giving Twitter another try over the last couple of weeks, partly through idle curiosity but presumably because I have nothing better to do with my time. I originally gave Twitter a go to see what all the fuss was about but rapidly lost interest. There are lots of Twitter tie-ins with TV and radio shows so it is worth having an account for that but I can’t see myself being an avid Twitterer (or Twitterati or Twat or whatever one is called when blurting out 140 characters of nonsense.)

I think it does has its uses for keeping track of particular public figures (comedians are a good target) as well as a couple of well curated news services. The problem with some is that they spew out far too many Tweets to keep track of and tend to swamp out other sources (The Economist is guilty of this, duly unfollowed.) It is also a reasonable way of trying to follow current events by searching on a hashtag but this can also have its downside.

I tried searching for information about the proposed Scottish Referendum (#Scotref) and this did produce quite a few results but it became fairly obvious that the majority of Tweets, whilst perfectly polite and constructive, were largely the result of an SNP echo chamber. The only real dissenting voices where mainly trolling comments from British Nationalist supporters who, if one followed their links, where operating in a parallel universe on a polar opposite echo chamber of their own. I also noticed a few obvious attempts to create a straw-man argument by creating a seemingly SNP orientated sock-puppet account which then spewed vile anti-Semitic posts for the (presumed) perpetrators to knock down.

I think the other thing I noticed from this political debate is that there are a number of accounts who repetitively spew out Tweets to the extent that I can only assume that it is a computer algorithm producing them. All of this becomes rapidly tiresome as well as using epithets such as Gnat or Yoon to describe those with which they disagree. Such language is more likely to put off those that are undecided rather than win them over.

There are nice elements to Twitter. I’ve noticed that there are a few journalists who are happy to join in with banter and it is also nice to be able to contact people to tell them that you enjoyed a show (I Tweeted Neil Brand after the Silent Cinema show in Bo’ness and he seemed to appreciate the comment – at least he retweeted it). However, to be perfectly honest I could really do without yet another banal waste of time and effort. Maybe I’ll stick to reading rather than writing it.

Anyway, the new series of Doctor Who starts next week and if there is one thing I know it is that " Doctor make bad thing better..."